by Leon Uris
“Don’t you get it, Darnell? This party allows me to spend twenty million non-campaign dollars and get a four-year running start.”
“I figured that out.”
Now silence between them. As the noise grew in decibels to shattering, the river hopped. Ashore, the tall shafts of buildings seemed to sway—blinding, deafening. There only seemed to be Thornton and Darnell in the quiet darkness at the railing of some ship.
The din and blasts and blinding light shower found its way to the nasdaq TRADER Darnell Jefferson clamped his hands over his ears and turned his eyes away. President Tomtree and “Uncle Tom.” It’s all flipped over. Listen, listen, he thought. The world is going mad.
TROUBLESOME MESA—EARLY EVENING
DECEMBER 31, 1999 State Senate Minority Leader Quinn Patrick O’Connell braked the Sno-cat and squinted through the swishes of the windshield wiper. His son, Duncan, jumped out of the Cat and sank down to his waist in snow.
His sister Rae operated the searchlight from inside the vehicle. Duncan came to the short log bridge and shoveled around, examined it, tested its weight-bearing capacity, then returned to the car. He opened the door, allowing a blast of frigid air to come in with him.
“Dad, the bridge looks solid to me.”
Quinn thought aloud. “We’ve got an awful heavy load in here. I think we’d better unload and sled the supplies over.”
This was a little conservative for the children, but Quinn always played on the side of caution when it came to them.
“Three sled loads should empty the cargo.”
The four of them worked like old packers filling the sled and, with two on the front and two on the rear, pulled it over the bridge, unloaded it and repeated the procedure two more times till the cat was emptied.
Rita and the children waited across the bridge as Quinn pumped himself
up and turned on the ignition. “Not too fast over the bridge,” he warned himself, “no slip-slides into the creek.” He applied the gas, released the brakes. The iron monster clawed its way over. The bridge did not give so much as a wobble.
Cheers!
Relief. They reloaded the Sno-Cat, and it purred a half mile uphill to Dan’s Shanty, the cabin in the sky.
It was anything but a shanty. The roof covering the living room and two sleeping lofts was a dome made of Plexiglas, and when filtering clouds gave way, one could see great pieces of the universe.
Lest we forget, Semper Fi, the essence of German shepherd, had already made the run to the cabin and greeted them. Man, he had a lot of guarding to do this night.
As Christmas approached, there had been rising apprehension that their long dream of seeing the new century in together at Dan’s Shanty might not happen. Senator Quinn and Rita were heavily in demand around the state. Grandmother Siobhan was confined to a wheelchair from a hip-replacement operation. She was in Denver and slated to be wheeled into a half dozen celebrations.
Snow covered the giant bubble, but as the fireplace and the heat of the cabin rose, it melted and slowly opened up the heavens to them.
Quinn mixed a weak concoction of champagne for the kids and a stiffer one for Rita and himself. At an altitude of twelve and a half thousand feet one did not need too much alcohol to get its message.
While the kids made up sleeping quarters, Quinn engaged in his second
most favorite sport, watching his wife move. The years had been
delicious to her, and she adored cavorting for him. She glided in
concert with herself, with her breasts always a bit loose and her hips
swaying like a Mexican village maiden at the water well. He had
watched her thus for twenty years, and for twenty years she had known it. Their mutual redemption from her affair with Carlos had given them an incredible strength.
Rita capped her kitchen duties by brushing past Quinn while bearing groceries and treating him to her devastating toss of the hair.
Life had been attacked as a new gift each morning. Although the need to find his origins never went away, it dulled because of their family success.
The years had given them peace and rewards. Through enormous love and plenty of hard work, their long-held dream had come true.
Dan’s Shanty was up to snuff, warm and filled with the aromas of a high mountain beans and meat meal. Semper Fi lowered his nose under his master’s champagne glass and gave it a quick flip, then backed off as though he were going to be beaten to death. Quinn pounced on him, and they wrestled till overcome by the smells and sounds of sizzling steak.
“Is this great or what!”
After the meal was devoured, it was still a few hours to the new century.
“I know by the gleam in your eye, Duncan .. .” Mother said on cue.
“I’ve got the springs cooled down to a hundred and four,” Duncan answered.
Well, she really only had to run twenty feet, but it was zero outside and this would be Semper Fi’s big moment.
Attired in string bikinis, the women ran screaming from the cabin to the springs.
“Hero! I’m a hero!”
“I am the bravest!”
“Jesus!”
Quinn served wine in paper cups as Duncan threw the ball for the dog. As each confirmed this was really the grandest thing in the world, they watched in awe and silence to let the comets put on their acts.
“And now!” said Quinn, “we separate the men from the boys and the people from the people.” He leapt from the springs, rolled in the snow, and returned to the steaming water as Semper Fi’s whiskers turned white with frozen moisture. Rita demanded respect from her children, who dragged her out into the snow, and she howled and Duncan howled when Rae tackled him and Rae howled when Rita plopped a load of snow on her back and all the coyotes in Troublesome Mesa howled.
Thank God, Semper Fi was there to protect them.
Duncan would soon be heading for the Colorado School of Mines to take two years of basic geology to better understand his turf. From there he would go to Colorado State, a ranking veterinarian school, and study to be a vet.
For years Duncan had fretted in silence about his desires. Every time he walked into the living room, he had to pass through two great guardians of the gate. On one side on a round table, a photograph of his grandfather, Dan O’Connell, receiving the Silver Medal and Purple Heart. On the mantel, a photograph of his father, Quinn Patrick O’Connell, in dress blues. Even his name, Duncan, was after a great Marine as the name Quinn had been after another.
Quinn got his son’s drift. The boy was struggling to decide whether to get in a few years of college before his Marine hitch, or do the hitch first.
“Son,” Quinn told him, “follow your own desires. Half the shit in this world comes from parents trying to bend their children into living as their alter egos.”
Rita spent her maternal efforts on Rae to always make the girl feel good about herself. The pixie should not and did not go into a beauty contest against her mother. Whenever Rae got down on herself or self-doubt seeped in, Rita would take her daughter and go off someplace for a few days, just the two of them.
They were close.
They had the tears, the rebellions, the pain that people living with people must endure, but bedrock was their family unit and it was powerful.
Neither Duncan nor Rae had a serious relationship at the moment, so they were thankful that only the four of them would be involved at Dan’s Shanty.
Quinn had his family in a safe place to live and grow from. He never cared to travel too far without them. His second office was in Denver. He shone as a Minority Whip in the Colorado Senate and many of his legislative positions were treasures. The last great liberal of the Rocky Mountains.
Rita learned from her mother-in-law the nuances of running the ranch, and with Juan in the saddle, the ranch had continued to prosper.
Rita’s main concern was that Quinn was wasting his talent in a position far too small for him. His Denver office had become a place
of social and political ideas, a think tank for interns, a confessional, a place where rival Republicans could come in and argue, a place where adversaries could arbitrate.
The press spread Quinn’s name beyond Colorado borders. Quinn had a divine secret. He was not on the take, he did not lie, and he admitted to mistakes. Quinn’s space in Denver took on the feel of a local shrine.
He was a charming speaker with a mix of mountain and clean Marine humor, much in control and a very cool hand at his senate position.
Rita knew that his Colorado anchor was set because she and Duncan and Rae came first. It was time, she prayed, for the family to give him something back.
They ended the meal fat and sassy, sitting on a pillowed floor in long Johns before the fire.
Duncan rambled on about the large animal hospital he planned to build on the ranch with a research facilky for disease control and breeding.
Rita figured that Granddad Mal and Grandmother Siobhan had deliberately taken themselves out of the trip up to the Shanty so the four of them could spend this incredible event together.
Mal? Reynaldo Maldonado was somewhere in Mexico or Paris or Manila being lionized with a thirty-something year-old lady on his arm.
“This is the happiest day of my life. The other two happiest days were seeing you two born,” Quinn said.
“Who are you thinking about, Quinn?” his wife asked knowingly.
“Dan. It took us half our lives ‘
“You get it,” Rae said. “If any dad in the world gets it, you do.”
“Keep loving,” Quinn said.
“So serious?” Rita asked.
“I’m so filled, I’m liable to start bawling,” Quinn said.
“Hear! Hear!” Duncan said.
Quinn stood, jiggled the fire, and balanced on the hearth. Rita knew her man. “I think your dad wants to tell us something,” she said, “and he’s having trouble.”
After a silence Quinn said, “Jesus, you can’t even hold a private thought with this crowd. I don’t want to sound like a freaking martyr who made sacrifices for you. The joy of my life has come to fruition at this moment. The happiness and well-being of the three of you outweighed any ambitions I might have had. Well, now you’ve grown up, and I believe you can bear the public crucifixions that go with public office. I’ve come under a lot of pressure from the party lately. They are bound and determined to have me run for governor in two thousand and two.”
“Shit, man, that’s great!” Duncan erupted.
“Cool!” noted Rae.
“Let’s tickle the governor,” Rita said, grabbing his ankles while Duncan bear-hugged him and Rae shoved him off the hearth.
“You people know how ticklish I am, so cease! I say, cease! Seriously! And get that bloody dog out of my face. Defend your master or you’re raccoon meat!” Semper Fi decided the best way to defend his master was to lick his lips, nose, and eyes.
“Dessert!” Quinn cried, howling. “What do we have for dessert?”
“Well, there is apple pie, pumpkin pie, brownies, carrot cake, and Haagan-Das .. .”
When it was midnight, they held hands, cried a little, and wished one another well. They talked until the fire died, then wearily crept up to the sleeping lofts. Rae and Duncan had nice thick featherbeds beneath them and comforters to cover them.
Mom and Dad, on the other side of the Shanty, tucked into a double sleeping bag.
Quiet lovemaking so no sounds would reach the children. Slow dancing, passionately slow, skilled. It took two hours to play it out.
They held onto each other as they arose and flew into space and over the millennium bridge. The star show seemed to move down to earth. Each star became a flake of snow as it drifted down to the bubble.
“Can’t you sleep?” Quinn asked.
“No. There’s never been a night like this.”
She breathed hard and wiggled a bit, signs that Quinn read well.
“Something is weighing on you. You can talk about Carlos,” he said.
It had been nearly twenty years since she had returned to Quinn. Ten years had gone by since Carlos disappeared on a chartered jet in the Caribbean. When his body floated ashore, the autopsy showed a gun wound to the back of his head and severe bone shattering. He had obviously been thrown out of the plane over water.
Quinn brought Carlos’ body home and set him down in the Troublesome Mesa Cemetery.
“When I was in Houston, hovering between sanity and madness,” she began, “I knew even then that the key to my recovery was in the pages of the Venice book. My guilt about my affair with Carlos, be it before our marriage or not, eroded me. God strike me down if I ever harbor another secret like that.. . well, I’m building a case for myself,” she said suddenly, and stopped talking.
“Please let go of it,” said Quinn.
“Some kind of a miracle took place. One day in Houston I picked up the hundred and fifty pages of Venice that I had given to you to read. The first time I had heard your comments I went into a rage, but I did not realize then that I was literally forcing you to reject me.”
They were tight now, lying in the same direction with his arms about her. She was calm, and her voice sounded like fine wine.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I picked up my own pages and dared to read them. Suddenly, this vast mystery of writing began to fade like the sun burning off the morning fog. At least now I had some insight to comprehend my work. Through introspection I felt that any true dormant talent in me was emerging. I could clearly judge my own errors and understand your comments. The miracle came when I understood that a large part of the writer’s being, of his talent, could only emerge through hard, hard work. And maybe if I worked hard enough, I’d raise the talent level enough to succeed.”
“What did you learn?” he asked.
“I rewrote those hundred and fifty pages. Someday you’ll read them
maybe, maybe not. I’m not afraid for you to read them anymore. Again,
I learned that doing those hundred and fifty pages took more endurance
and willpower and raw strength than I believed a human being could possess. Well, these new pages were good, Quinn, but what a price.”
The woman was kissed as she loved it, over her neck and back, and his hands were smooth of touch and she whimpered with joy.
“So,” she said, “what was it that I really wanted? Was I really ready to give it all to be a writer? I used writing as a baby blanket. The fear, the enslavement to that bloody typewriter, the isolation, the numbed mind and scarred soul, all those things that make a writer. I wanted Quinn,” she said, “and I wanted Quinn’s children. In the end loving you was by far the more powerful of the two forces, and I’ve never shed a tear over the abandonment of the writer’s siren song. Thank you for taking me back twenty years ago.”
“I hope I can love you as much.”
“You do.”
“Wow!” he whispered at the wonder of it.
“Yeah,” she said, “wow!”
Quinn pulled her tush into his tummy and kissed her shoulders.
“You kidding me, Quinn?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Mind if I find out?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
THE ALAMO, MARYLAND
MOTHER’S DAY, 2002
AMERIGUN was a show dog with a single trick, the unimpeded promotion of gun sales. It swore to a single credo. Namely, that any American of any age could buy and own any weapon in any numbers without accountability ... as guaranteed by Second Amendment rights in the Constitution. Anything less was unacceptable, including baby locks on pistols.
Central to AMERIGUN’s credo, anchored in bedrock, immovable, was to portray gun owners as victims for trying to defend themselv
es as they were being hounded by a government conspiracy.
The nation had undergone too many bombings, too many drive-by and schoolyard shootings, too many church burnings and too many grown men playing weekend warriors in the woods.
In Bill Clinton there was finally an American president ready to stand up against the violence and its chief perpetrators. Once one of the most feared lobbys in Washington, AMERIGUN’s bite-and-rip bully-boy Doberman tactics were not working quite so well now.
The Clinton reelection in 1996 forced AMERIGUN into a defensive posture. Unable to compromise or think in any new direction, the organization began to sink in its own muck.
What had been unthinkable a decade earlier, newspaper articles and editorials, magazine pieces, and TV specials now catalogued the perils of reckless gun ownership. A big shift came as the American people solidly supported gun control. The issue was out in the open at last.
Bill Clinton, Southern boy from a Southern state, became the first American president to stand for gun control. He brought his message home by as many executive orders on gun control as he was able.
However, the American Congress defaulted on backup legislation.
AMERIGUN used the time-tested stick-and-carrot method on the Congress. Donations to the campaign fund or face defeat in reelection. Because gun control crossed party lines in “traditional” gun states, the political parties were equally timid.
It fell to city councils and state legislators to enact the measures that Washington had defaulted on. In local situations the call against arms had such public support as to allow dozens of new gun-control laws to get on the books.
By 2000 AMERIGUN had been badly battered, having lost tens of thousands of members. Its headquarters in McLean, Virginia, was a dinosaur with a kaput eight-million-dollar computer system. It was crawl out or die.
AMERIGUN’s secret handlers formed a super committee to “guide” the future destiny of the organization. These nine men and two women innocuously called themselves The Combine. Their names were not known to anyone, including AMERIGUN. They represented the weapons makers, lobbyists, and financial controllers.